Better to Light a Candle (Than Curse the Darkness)
by FrannyLuvsAll
Summary: In the style of five and one: Felicity, a vigilante, and the spirit of Hanukkah.


**Better to Light a Candle (Than Curse the Darkness)** – An Olicity Secret Santa gift fic  
In the style of five and one: Felicity, a vigilante, and the spirit of Hanukkah.  
For bisexuallaurellance on tumblr – wishing you the happiest of holidays and a bright, kind New Year!

* * *

 **i.**

The night her father leaves is nothing out of the ordinary. Her parents argue, of course. Not loudly or often, but they have their moments. Her father is a genius, with a penchant for off-book jobs. Her mother is a waitress, who works too hard. She's never quite sure what one saw in the other, but she also never thought they were unhappy.

The night her father leaves is one she can't remember. She's not sure what day of the week, or the exact date. It's not like he hadn't been gone before. There had been other times he had left, sometimes for a few days and others a few weeks. But he had always come back.

Three months pass before she starts to worry, and another six before the anger sets in. Felicity feels like a monster is growing inside her chest, furious and consuming. Her mother cries every night for the first year, locked behind her bedroom door. Felicity begins to pull away, blaming her mother for leaving her alone to fight that monster who's taken residence in her heart.

Slowly, Donna Smoak begins to return to a semblance of herself. Almost a year has passed, and Felicity has become more introverted. Despite how hard Donna tries, she spends her days in her room either tinkering with computers or her nose pressed into a book. She has no friends, which worries her mother. But Felicity can't be bothered. Kids her age don't understand her, and not just because of her intellect. She's still harboring a fugitive.

The first night of Hanukkah the year her dad leaves, Felicity arrives home from school to an apartment nearly covered in glittering decoration. Donna wanted nothing more than to surprise her daughter, bring some cheer to their home that had been sorely lacking. Cartoonish cutouts of menorahs and dreidels hang from the arch separating the living room and kitchen. Blue and silver garlands wrap every window sill, and a brass menorah sits on the coffee table waiting to be lit.

Felicity watches Donna as she jumps in place, clapping her hands frantically asking, "Do you love it, honey? I thought it would make you happy."

The dull scratch of the monster's claws begins to burn, and eight year old Felicity has had enough. With a sweep of her hand, she pulls down a strip of garland as a scream rips from her throat. Startled horror flashes across Donna's face, mirrored in Felicity's own.

She runs to her room, slamming the door and collapsing against it once shut. Donna never comes to check on her, and she falls asleep on the floor. The following morning, the decorations are gone and her mother never mentions the previous night's events.

Hanukkah is not celebrated again in the Smoak household, and Felicity will spend the next 18 years running from that monster as she chases a ghost.

 **ii.**

"And Merry Christmas."

The words are out of her mouth with a surprising candor. This is not the first time, nor likely the last, when she would correct goyim on her faith. It was, however, the first in more than five years since leaving Vegas for Massachusetts that she had bothered.

Maybe it's the almost reverent tone he uses when he tells her she's remarkable, or the fact that he is ridiculously handsome and infuriatingly mysterious. But when Oliver Queen wishes her a "Happy Hanukkah" – forthright and earnest, her heart drops into her stomach.

Startlingly familiar, she realizes with stuttered breath the last man to say those words to her was all but a handful of memories now. Painful reminders of what she's lost and also what she's left behind flash through her mind. Her mother's bright smile at the beloved garish garlands she'd hung, trying in vain to create new memories and replace those old hurts. The cards she sends every year, including the unopened one Felicity's stubbornly ignored in her mailbox the past three days, written in her loopy script. She closes her eyes briefly and sees the flicker of candles reflecting in the pane of a window, blurring the depressed reflection of a little girl with brown hair and big glasses.

Turning back to her computer, she composes herself quickly. Oliver Queen and his whims aside, she is still at work and has a professional reputation to uphold.

It's not until later, while standing barefoot in her kitchen trying to open a bottle of wine that she makes a decision. Perhaps long overdue, or maybe right on time, she places the call.

 _Hey, mom._

 **iii.**

Her mother sends her a suspicious package that year, arriving on time for the first night of Hanukkah. She places the contents on her coffee table, and spends upwards of thirty minutes staring. It's been almost ten years since she's seen the brass menorah, her grandmother's. The one her father taught her to light before he left – in those years WD, _with dad_.

Scrunching her nose, she glares hard enough for the outline to blur. Light reflects off the brass, as her eyes begin to sting. Before she has time to reconsider, she's up and moving. Grabbing the menorah by the base, she practically marches toward the window and slams the candelabra onto the sill. Returning to the coffee table, she snatches up the box of wax candles and quickly but loudly fetches a book of matches from her kitchen junk drawer.

"Mind over matter, Smoak. It's about time," she mumbles to herself while kneeling in front of the window. The menorah is within her eye line now, and if she were any less rational of a woman than she would say it's mocking her – all that shininess and pocked patina.

Placing the candles and matches on the floor, she moves quickly to switch off the living room light. The streetlamp outside provides enough brightness to make her way back to the window unscathed. Taking a deep breath, she strikes the first match and with it, takes back something she had long thought lost.

Two days later, when Barry Allen inquiries about her holiday plans there is no hesitation to her response.

 _Lighting my menorah._

And as the days progress, a warmth unfurls in her chest with each night, each candle, each prayer. There are tears of course, as to be expected when a person finally finds a place to leave their burdens. But solace found is solace shared, and those who have received will find a way to give.

"How do I look?"

She wants to tell him that the world isn't split into saints and sinners, how the morally righteous and the morally ambiguous are common bedfellows. There is purpose in his suffering. As much as it scares her – terrifies, really – Oliver was meant to walk this path.

Maybe she's known it all along, since the night he bled on her backseat that this man was, _is_ more. His world may be shadows and pain, suffering, torture and heartbreak; but if anyone can overcome those circumstances, it's Oliver Queen. If she's sure of nothing else in this life, she's sure of that.

She's not surprised to have found hope in this journey, but there's a drive to help, to save, to _protect_ that she can no longer deny. And though he may never admit this, she knows Oliver needs her. She's the tech support, go-to geek, and the voice in his ear. When he's on that ledge straddling the line between vigilante and killer and the darkness marks to claim him, she is his tether.

His eyes search her face, for what she's not sure. But the truth has a way of twisting the tongue, finding the voice, lighting the dark.

 _Like a hero._

 **iv.**

Sitting cross-legged each night, candle by candle she whispers his name into the dark. A despondent invocation, released from a despair the light cannot touch.

 _Come back._

 **v.**

" _Sustained trauma…body needs to heal…medically induced coma…"_

He and Donna stand vigil for the first week, trading positions between her bedside and the reclining chair brought in by one of the night shift nurses. Each day, he feels more tattered as the fabric of his heart frays and unravels the longer she remains unconscious. He's barely holding himself together; but as he watches Donna brush Felicity's hair or wipe a warm cloth against her cheek, he can't help the slight upturn of his lips. He misses his mother fiercely in those moments, but what's more is the overwhelming gratitude he has for Donna Smoak.

The days turn into a week, but her vitals are good and the doctors are more optimistic on her improving. On the ninth night, he finally convinces Donna to head back to the apartment. His guilt-laden reasoning, "she'll want her tablet when she wakes up," and "you need to sleep in an actual bed," is selfish at best. He wants to be alone with her. There are no words to describe why, despite how hard he's tried to summon them.

But Donna, being a mother and a Smoak woman, has that illusive power of knowing exactly what Oliver Queen needs regardless of his failure to communicate. She stands, adjusting her dress and pulling her purse high on her shoulder. With a kiss to Felicity's forehead, she whispers "I'll be back in the morning, baby girl."

The needle slowly threading Oliver's heart back together sews another stitch when Donna kisses his forehead, too.

When they're finally alone, he positions himself in a precarious balance between the left side of her bed and the recliner he's wedged against the wall. Through sheer force of will, he carefully manages to lie next to her. Her skin is clammy, not as warm as he expected and this is the moment when sorrow finds him. Oliver sobs into her neck, a pleading, strangled sound. Apologies and guilt are whispered onto her skin as he continues to cry until there is nothing left to give.

The stillness that follows is heavy but not unwelcome. And in the oppressive quiet of her hospital room, there is only his garbled breathing and sharp, electronic tone of the heart monitor beeping steadily. He follows the noise unconsciously until he realizes the sound is mimicked in her chest.

Pressing his ear gently closer to her breast, he hears it. That beautiful thump of her heart. Closing his eyes, he imagines her smile, her laugh, the way she scrunches her nose when she's thoroughly amused. He sees her skipping through ankle high waves on the shore in Bali; trying and failing to read a map because Italian roads are confusing and the Wi-Fi connection non-existent. He watches her profile as she types at her keyboard in the lair, glasses and perfectly coiffed ponytail making him grin.

Time passes slowly as he listens to the rhythm, constant and measured. Oliver follows the ebb and flow of her breath trying to match his own. And there, in the sharing of energy, the flow of their joint life force, does he finally find the light.

 **i.**

Walking into the loft, Oliver is immediately accosted by a cloyingly sweet smell with just a hint of smoke. Obviously, this means only one thing – Felicity is trying to cook. He heads straight for the kitchen, shrugging out of his jacket and laying it across the back of the couch.

His son is kneeling on a stool at the counter, poking pretzel rods into marshmallows while Felicity is stirring a bowl of an unknown bright blue substance he fears is frosting. As he gets closer, he realizes she's reciting berakhot with William listening with rapt attention.

She smiles widely when she spies him, but continues with her lesson. Oliver rests a hand on William's back, and presses a kiss to his head when the boy leans into him. The battle has been mostly uphill, but Oliver knows a thing or two about hard earned trust. Since Oliver and Samantha have been on better terms, she's allowed William to visit more frequently over the last year. Felicity had fist pumped when Samantha had agreed to let William stay overnight for the first night of Hanukkah. She hadn't stopped talking since then about how much she wanted to share these traditions with him.

 _He's your son, Oliver. That means he's my family, too. And you and I, my love, have lost enough._

When she's finished, William peppers her with questions about the three blessings and Felicity laughs through trying to fill in the gaps of his knowledge. He's bouncing on his knees, and Oliver wraps an arm around his waist to steady him.

Hoping to give Felicity a reprieve from his excited ten year old, Oliver breaks in to ask what they're making.

"Dreidel pops!" Felicity holds up a pretzel speared now blue marshmallow with aplomb, and William nods in agreement.

"Felicity found a video on Buzzfeed," he tells Oliver. Leaning closer, he whispers in his father's ear "she burnt the white chocolate chips three times though – _in the microwave_!"

Oliver can only chuckle, but Felicity points a very blue spatula their way. "I heard that!" Laughter fills the kitchen, echoing off the walls in their home.

Later that evening, Felicity stands behind William who holds the lit shamash to the first candle. Her hands on his shoulders guide him, while she recites the blessings. She can feel Oliver behind her, and as his lips press to the tip of her shoulder she can't help her smile.

When she's finished, William turns to her in a hushed whisper, "Happy Hanukkah, Felicity."

A watery smile breaks across her face as she whispers back, "Happy Hanukkah, William."

The reflection in the window is the smiling faces of three people, each trying in their own way to make meaning in chaos. The city will still need saving, and their course far from smooth. But in the soft glow, the light of home burns brightest on this first, peaceful night.


End file.
